EverQuest II

"All hype, and doesn't deliver"

*This is a review of EQ from Launch to late February 2005 when I quit, so it may get better over time

Graphics: Make no mistake about it, EQ2 has some pretty damn good graphics compared to any game out currently, they just come at the cost of a $4000 computer. Most people have to play this game at medium settings with lower settings for character detail just to have decent framerates. At max settings this game is beautiful, you can't play it at those settings though. Now considering that they said that the graphics were designed to scale over time I'm going to give this a higher score then I would normally.

5/10

Sound: The quality of the sound in this game is great, sometimes, it's got a somewhat catchy theme song that loops endlessly, and the character make grunts when they fall down, or take damage, or hit the enemy. Basically what you'd except from most games, but nothing to make it rise above the many games with mediocre sound.

5/10

Controls: Having played EQ1 I was happy that the general control scheme was kept the same. However the changed a few things such as how the chat system works, but if your familiar with the EQ1 set up this one is quite similar.

9/10

Gameplay: This is it, the most important part, gameplay. Here is where this game fails miserably. They tried to do too much and make this game too different and it just doesn't work. Basically someone thought it would be a good idea for you to have about 20 skills that you need to do constantly, so that means you need 2-3 hotbars open which clogs up your screen. Then there's the fact that they turned this game into a button masher, if I go out hunting in a group I spend the whole time clicking off my moves, one after the other, this wouldn't be so bad, but your have about 7 that you cycle through over and over. Then the skills are also level based so they constantly get replaced in your hotbars every 14 levels approximately. This could turn out alot better later down the line, but currently it's no fun to button mash for hours on end for little to no gain.

3/10

Quests: This section was too important to stick in the Gameplay section, so it gets it's own. Now given that this game is called EverQuest 2 I expected them to have quests, just not as many as they do. Every NPC in this game has a quest almost, some have 2 or 3. At first it was neat to run around and help them all out, but later on you end up spending hours hunting these super rare spawns, or hordes of creatures for a really mediocre reward. This could have been fun if they implemented it right, but as is the quests are either kill X number of X creature, or deliver this to X NPC. Not as fun as it should be.

2/10

Fun: This is basically how you should rate any game, by how much fun you have playing it. EQ2 starts out fun, especially if you play with friends. However once your group spilts up and you discover this copy and pasted world full of bland NPC's and creatures it looses all appeal it once had. Killing 200 goblins isn't fun, running around the world isn't fun, and tradeskilling definitely isn't fun, anymore that is, it was at launch.

10/10 to start
2/10 after a few months

Overall EQ2 isn't bad to start out, but somehow Sony managed to make the monotony of a MMORPG boring in EQ2, it's no longer fun to go explore, especially since you get a map for free, it's tedious to do the same quest that gets copy and pasted onto 200 different NPC's.

On the other hand, when EQ came out it wasn't nearly as good as it is now, it took time and expansions to get where it is, something that EQ2 has neither of. Maybe if I come back to this game in a couple expansions I'll give another review of this game, it has some potential, now if they only fix things right it might be great.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/27/05